


Remnants of Remnants

by swordfaery



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:21:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27866038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swordfaery/pseuds/swordfaery
Summary: Tanith and Dexter discuss who they are after something else was them.
Relationships: Tanith Low & Dexter Vex
Comments: 3
Kudos: 2
Collections: Skulduggery Pleasant Fic Exchange 2020





	Remnants of Remnants

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CatTheGrimReaper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatTheGrimReaper/gifts).



It was getting colder. Tanith hated the cold. She had forsaken her signature leathers, opting for fleece jackets and longer sleeves- but still the wind battered its way in. Good quality warm clothes were expensive though, and her current line of work didn’t exactly pay well. 

Perhaps she should flirt with another tailor. 

As soon as the thought crossed her mind she felt guilty. Ghastly had been more than just a tailor to flirt with, and she couldn’t just replace him with someone else who knew how to sew. God it wasn’t fucking fair! He hadn’t been her soulmate, or the love of her life- she had liked him sure but it wasn’t like they were a timeless love story. Simply two people who never got the closure they deserved for their feelings, and never would. 

Instead, for the last few years of his life, Ghastly had had to watch whatever it was that she had been running around with Billy-Ray. Then he died, and she came back, and it was a whole mess. 

Thinking about Billy-Ray made her sad as well, although this sadness was more complicated. She didn’t understand why it hurt so much knowing he was dead, the she that was actually her didn’t know him well enough for this level of grief, and the remnant that she had been didn’t care enough about him. Or at least she didn’t think it had, despite being the only person to have lived with a remnant longer than a few years and then having it removed, she understood precious little about remnants. She didn’t have any memories from the experience, and there were hardly any studies about them. 

“Hey.” said a low, slightly strained voice from behind her. Dexter. “I came to check you were ok.”

“I’m-” Tanith stood up, and realised that her face was wet with tears. She was crying? When had she started crying? “I’m ok.” she managed, trying to ignore the soft way Dexter was looking at her. He was too nice for this, would make her open up about her feelings and Tanith didn’t have time for that right now. They were on a mission for fuck’s sake. 

Dexter continued to give her that soft worried look. “We’ve been working together a while, Tanith. You can talk to me.”

Tanith shrugged. “Just remnant stuff, you know-” 

“Yeah.”

Oh. Despite the rasp in his voice and the scars that poked out from around his new slight beard, Tanith had half forgotten that Dexter was probably the only person who did know. 

“Guilt?” he continued, sitting down on the tree stump near her. Tanith wasn’t sure when she had agreed to talking about her feelings with Dexter, but he was a good listener. 

“Sort of? I mean, yeah of course I feel guilty but like, I mean,” she paused, moving her hands in the way that demonstrated her mind was still moving, attempting to come up with words that explained exactly how she felt. “Will you think less of me if I told you I was thinking about boys?”

Dexter gave a short laugh. “Nothing wrong with thinking about boys- I’ve spent this whole trip thinking about one in particular- but we’re not here to talk about him.”

“Saracen?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to him about it later. Are you thinking about Ghastly?”

Tanith paused just long enough for Dexter to understand. He took in a sharp intake of breath. “Sanguine.” he said, it wasn’t a question. 

“My remnant self loved him. Apparently remnants can do that now, or something, because my remnant self had friends and cared about people and-” she paused for breath, “I saw a woman a few months back who was so happy to see me, seemed so familiar I was sure I was the me who had known her. Turned out she was someone my remnant self had saved from an abusive ex. Someone that my remnant self had done something nice for.”

“That’s nice?” 

Tanith shrugged again. “Or was it? Can remnants be nice? Did I actually do that?” 

Dexter gave her the tiniest shake of his head, signaling that he didn’t know either. 

“I did- I mean I think I did, terrible things.” he began. Tanith nodded. “But see, all a remnant does is remove your conscience so everything I did must have on some level wanted? Right?”

Was that how it worked?

Tanith had never had any allusions about being a truly good person- she had killed far too many people for that, but part of her had thought that up until the remnant maybe she had been getting better. Apparently not.. 

“If it helps, feeling guilty is a good sign? I doubt truly bad people feel remorse?” 

When she had stopped being an assassin her brother had told her that. She could see on Dexter’s face that it had the same lack of effect on him that it had had on her. 

“I never thought I was truly a good person…” he began. “But Tanith, I kidnapped a baby!”

“Yeah.” There was a beat of silence, and Tanith knew Dexter was also thinking about all the damage that they had caused. 

“You know, sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever feel like me again.” She continued, her voice wobbling slightly. “I feel older, different, like some part of me changed during those years, but I barely remember them. My friends died, grew up, changed into different people- Valkyrie became Darquesse and I wasn’t there for her.” She gave a bitter laugh, “It feels like I’m scrambling to put together the pieces of what I was and what I am now, but so many of them are missing.”

Dexter shifted over slightly, and put an arm around her. “Yeah.” he said quietly, the rasp in his voice less detectable at a lower volume. “For me it’s like the remnant made me dirty, made me into something ugly; and no matter how much I try I can never be clean.”

Tanith nodded. “I miss Ghastly. I miss him so much- and yet that's nothing compared to how much a part of me misses Billy-Ray, and I hate it! I barely remember him!”

“Ghastly would understand.” said Dexter, with the certainty of a man who had known him for hundreds of years. “It’s not a betrayal.”

“No.” Tanith agreed. “Just another piece of me that’s lost.”


End file.
